It has been my joy/privilege/honor (all of these) to know several people who were deserving of the oft-overapplied term of "genius." One of those was Stan Freberg, who was born one hundred years ago today and who left us in April of 2015 at the age of 88.
I first discovered his work via Soupy Sales' TV shows when Soupy would fill four minutes by having his puppet friends, Pookie and Hippie, mime to one of Freberg's brilliant comedy records. I was twelve or so…but Freberg had been a presence in my life for years, in one sense before I was born. At my sixtieth birthday party, he met my mother who told him that she used to watch Time for Beany when she was pregnant with me.
Stan was Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent, Dishonest John and several other characters on that legendary puppet show he did with his frequent partner, Daws Butler — another genius I was thrilled to know and work with. Before Time for Beany, Stan was a top cartoon voice actor. During Time for Beany, he became a writer-performer of top-selling novelty records. After Time for Beany, he did more records and became the auteur of some of the cleverest, funniest commercials ever made. For a time, every ad you could laugh at on radio or TV was either created by Freberg or by some ad agency trying to imitate Freberg.
He proved comedy could be smart and that satire was not just something, like the great George S. Kaufman once remarked, that closed on Saturday night. The man may have died eleven years ago but his work and influence are still with us. Here's but a tiny sample of what he could do…